An Anxious Educator

“Through acceptance and love, it might not make this thing go away but you’ll have someone who is loyal and treats you better than anyone in your life. While the fear of people leaving dictates our life, if you stay with us we’ll return the favor and there won’t be a person who loves you more.”

Yes, I found this post through Facebook, but does that really matter? Not to me. It’s not political, it’s emotional. Anyway….

I really love this post, as a person with some pretty crippling anxiety, and a person who deals with other people who also have anxiety, it’s refreshing to see a blog post like this one that is so accurate for me that I don’t have to think, “well this tiny section didn’t apply to me so I’m not going to share it, because people will think I’m a phony or in serious danger.” And that is a shining example of some of the anxiety I deal with anytime I post something to social media.

But this post resonated with me. It is so accurate for me, it touches on issues I deal with every day. If you don’t know, I’m in a long distance, very serious relationship with this girl who keeps me both sane and insane. Sane because she ‘gets me’ and knows how to handle me, but insane because sometimes she’s horrible at texting and my thoughts exactly align with the thoughts that are mentioned in the post by Kirsten.

Sane because she somehow loves me through my anxiety, and insane because a little piece of me is still screaming, “How can anyone love you, you aren’t good at anything.”

Maybe you’re wondering how I’m going to tie this to education, but I’m gonna, I promise. But some background was needed to better understand my personal connections and such.

As a person who has kind of grown into anxiety in the last ten years of my life, I know how hard it is to be fine with something and the next year the thought of that something is enough to make your chest tight and your breathing quick and shallow.

I used to think I would never find anything I wanted to do that would make me happy for the rest of my life. In 8th grade I wanted to be a hair stylist, an interior designer, a teacher, and a chef all at the same time because no one ever told me I could do things in different stages of my life. In 9th grade I narrowed to maybe an interior designer, chef, and teacher, mostly because I realized cutting hair sucks and I suck at it and I don’t like touching strangers. Once again, my anxieties about being in a profession that wouldn’t make me happy for the rest of my life scared me and so I wanted to be prepared for one of them to let me down.

I’ve lived my life one let down at a time, looking back, this is probably a big cause in the development of my anxiety, but there’s more to it than that. I like to think that there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe that what your parents do when you are young don’t actually affect you that much, but a little piece of me isn’t sure that if I hadn’t had so many awful women paraded through my life that maybe my anxieties wouldn’t be this bad. Sure, all of them had good qualities, but the cons generally outweighed the pros in their cases.

My mother, my momma, my actual mom, the first wife, an amazing woman. I wouldn’t exchange her for any other mom. She’s been the greatest woman in my life to always be in my life. We’ve had our rough patches, but that is to be expected.

My fathers last wife, is really where things got serious. My anxieties were through this planets atmosphere. I was not in a good place, and if we’re being totally honest, my plans were to get out of Arkansas and hope things would get better, and if they didn’t that’s ok, because college students have a pretty high suicide rate, and I love statistics. Anyway, if you ask me about her I will give you more details besides, “she’s the worst kind of devil.”

So, here’s how I’m connecting anxiety to education….

Students need to be Loved through their anxieties. They need to feel that their teachers care, and are there to help them succeed and become better people. As an educator with anxiety, I want all students to know that they are cared for, so that they can be the best student they can be, and have a great and bright, sunny future.

My best teachers have been those who show they care, and are constant in their efforts. Even teachers can have anxiety. And I think that if a teacher is honest with their students about having anxiety too, that could be a great way to wobble with your students. If your students can see you as a human that also has anxiety, they will look up to you for being able to control it enough to teach them and still care about them as people.

As a person I am fiercely loyal, once I’ve made a place for you in my life you’re going to be there for good, and you’re going to know it. My anxiety makes it hard for me to believe that other people can want to return those loyal feelings. But, my partner has helped me to get through some of these anxieties, and now I’m working on being an educator. And as an educator I want to help students work with their anxieties so that they can make the most of their lives.

If you have any advice for working through anxiety with others or anything of the such leave it in a comment, I’d love to hear it.

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One thought on “An Anxious Educator ”

I love your point, teachers are indeed humans and not just vampires that sleep in the school. Being human includes having anxiety, and I genuinely adore how you plan to share that with your students. It really would give them a chance to see that just because they have anxiety it does not mean that they won’t be successful in whatever field they choose to go into.

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